


One Plus God Knows What On The Other Side

by transmarkwatney (felilivargas)



Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types, The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: Angst, Ficlet, Gen, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 15:53:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14814354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felilivargas/pseuds/transmarkwatney
Summary: Mark takes a few minutes to muse about loneliness, and the Command Module Pilots of the Apollo program before him that went through the same thing.





	One Plus God Knows What On The Other Side

You ever wonder about what it’s like to be that one guy in the CSM, floating behind the moon, totally out of contact with NASA?

Sorry. Context. I’m in a pretty similar boat right now, you know, being in the middle of space, nothing to look at but some buttons and a desolate, rocky environment, and no one planetside to talk to.

When I was in college, and I was still just aiming to be an astronaut, I didn’t really know what I was getting into. Well, I did, in theory, but I didn’t prepare for this sorta stuff all that well. I was focused on grades, trying not to fail statics and diffeq, you know, all the usual STEM major stuff. But sometimes, when I lay in bed at the end of the day, I would imagine being an astronaut. And I would think about the old days of the Apollo missions, and the Gemini and Mercury missions, and sometimes I would think about the stuff they’d said and some of the quotes that stuck with me. It was always just end-of-the-day musing, you know.

But when you don’t have any grades or midterms to worry about anymore, and you’ve done everything you can for the day, and there’s no one to talk to and nothing to listen to but awful disco music, you end up returning to your old mental worrystones, you know? I’m like a parrot trapped in a cage here, with only a small number of toys to pick from. I’ll take the ones I can.

So lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Michael Collins, the guy from Apollo 11 who never landed on the moon.

When people think of the moon landings, they usually think of just that: the guys who landed on the moon, collected a bunch of rocks, said some inspirational stuff, played some golf, and left. But there was always that third guy, the one who stayed in the Command-Service Module while the Lunar Module went down moonside and delivered the astronauts to and from their rocky destination. They aren’t the ones who get the glory, even Michael Collins, the one on Apollo 11. But I think they’ve got one of the most interesting jobs, and one of the more humbling ones, too.

You land on the moon, you think of how great mankind is to have gotten there. You float behind the moon? You’re on your own. You don’t have anyone to talk to, no friends to text, no Houston to whine to, none of that. You’re sitting there, in your Apollo-era death can, and your only friend is the Moon. That, and the distant stars. You aren’t thinking about how great humanity is. You’re thinking about how small you are.

Remind you of someone?

It’s hard, when I walk out, to remind myself: humanity has collectively worked our asses off for this moment to be possible. Thousands of years of engineering has culminated in this moment. The Apollo 1 astronauts? They died for this. They knew they could and probably would die, and they wanted to be remembered as working for this.

Well, I hope they’re watching me from Heaven, or whatever’s up there, and they’re satisfied with how much I’m working my ass off to honor them (or, really, to stay alive.)

I mean, I guess I know that this is just a chapter of human spaceflight, you know? The Ares program, interest in Mars at all. I’m probably just a footnote. “By the way, humanity is full of dumbasses who decided to leave possibility to leave one of their own on this planet, long before they colonized it.”

But it doesn’t feel like a chapter when you’re living it.

When I was a kid, I remember watching Apollo 13, and rooting the whole time for the crew and Mission Control. But it was just that, to me: it was a story. It was a triumphant story, too. You knew the crew was going to live. It was a story about survival against all odds, and being trapped with little to keep you alive but your wits and hope that the universe, in its apathy, will accidentally be kind to you. I thought I knew what being an astronaut was about then: it was about camaraderie, and determination, and everything that makes us human. But now that I’m in a similar situation, it doesn’t feel like that anymore. There’s no moral. There’s no shots of NASA rooting for me (let’s be real, they’re probably mourning me). 

I know, if I make it home, that I’ll be like the Apollo 13 crew: I’ll be a hero. I’ll be put on a pedestal and revered for years as a reminder of the admance and resilience of mankind. But if I die… I’m not sure what’s worse: dying, or what will happen to me afterwards. NASA will remember me, my family will remember me, but my struggles will ultimately be suppressed by flat Earthers and those sorts of anti-science bastards. I’ll be brought up to prove that spaceflight should never happen. Either way, people will only focus on the ending: the tenacity of life, or the fragility of it. No one--or maybe a few people will, but they won’t be reporters--will stop and think, “I wonder what it was like, you know, to be that one sucker dropped off on another planet and left there alone with fuck-all to talk to but some potatoes and the bathroom mirror. I wonder what it’s like to be the lone soul in a new frontier.”

It’s just… It’s weird, you know. I didn’t come here for the glory. (Okay, maybe a little, but that wasn’t the point.) I came here because, at the end of the day, I’m a kid who grew up with the ISS being one of the strongest symbols of world peace. I spent my childhood with the Shuttle flying overhead. I came here because I wanted to be an astronaut. I didn’t really want my name on plaques; I just wanted to be a part of the story. Now, I’ll have to put up with people asking me, for the rest of my life, what it’s like to be Mark Watney, alone on a planet, left to die by his crewmates, surviving only on a few spare calories and my own wit. People will want to know, you know, what’s it like to be the first human to see these craters? What’s it like to be the only person who could ever hear your voice for such a long period of time? What’s it like to be so damn lonely?

Well, I know. And I know Michael Collins does, too. I think he’s one of the few other astronauts out there that’s felt as lonely as I do right now. The rest of them, they’ve always had someone to talk to, someone in ground control talking into a microphone, or other astronauts with them. They’ve never undertaken this journey truly alone. Not the way I have.

**Author's Note:**

> If you aren't familiar with it: the CMP (Command Module Pilot) refers to the Apollo crewmember who piloted the Command-Service Module of the Apollo spacecraft. While they never went to the lunar surface, CMPs underwent just as rigorous training as their moonwalking counterparts, the Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) and Commander (CDR).
> 
> I wrote this fanfic before Artemis's release, and seeing the book dedicated to the Apollo CMPs made my day. :) (The only part of Artemis that struck my fancy other than the technicalities of how the station worked. Reusable condom who?)


End file.
